In the darkness of pre-dawn hours, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Kochi, a large number of men would gather outside the house of an employer they called Moopan. The Moopan’s staff would face the crowd of men and toss a few metal coins into their midst. In the next few minutes, the men would run, hop, and fight each other to grab one of those coins, called chappa. The chappa would ensure they get work for the day at the Cochin port.
This happened in Kochi between the 1930s and 60s, after the development of the Cochin port and until the labourers’ fight against the barbaric chappa system finally won. It was a long, long fight and it took away the lives of three labourers who were at the forefront of the protest. The Mattancherry firing of 1953 killed three men, when they marched on the streets of this Jew Town and the police aimed their guns at them.
All of it, from the early days of the chappa to the long days of protests and the firing, have become the backdrop of Thuramukham, a long awaited film by acclaimed cinematographer and filmmaker Rajeev Ravi. “It forms the backdrop of the film, but the story set against it is a fictional one, about a family of four – a mother raising her three children,” says the writer of the film Gopan Chidambaram. He adapted it from a play of the same name made by his father – the late KM Chidambaram – in the late 1960s, while the Mattancherry firing was still fresh on the minds of Kochi dwellers.
“Even I knew some of the real-life characters he placed in the play,” Gopan says. He revived the play in 2018 and had it staged for three days at the Uru Art Harbour in Mattancherry. Rajeev Ravi asked him about the play, about making it a film. The filming happened between years of terrible floods, further delayed by the onset of COVID-19. Thuramukham, when it finally released, was marked by strong performances of actors Poornima Indrajith (playing the mother), Nivin Pauly and Arjun Ashokan (playing the sons), Darshana Rajendran (daughter) and Nimisha Sajayan (a daughter-in-law). Early scenes featuring Joju George, in black and white, brought alive the practice of chappa and what it did to the workers.
Watch: Trailer of Thuramukham
The film brought fresh attention to the nearly forgotten chappa system once again. The whole story was little documented in those years, for fear of the reputation it would bring Kerala, as a state of militant trade unionism preventing industrial growth. Several trade unions had sprung up among the port workers, bringing them together to fight against the chappa. A detailed paper written by historian Justin Mathew, faculty at the Delhi University, describes the events that led to the formation of trade unions and the fight against chappa.
Justin defines chappa as a caste and community-based labour recruitment practice. The system was run by a nexus of the port authority, shipping agents and of course the Moopan — a name for the worksite supervisor. Together they exploited the desperate situation of the working class, affected by the aftermath of the Great Depression (1929) and the Second World War (1939-44). This wasn’t uncommon. Justin writes that there was a lax implementation of labour laws leading to underpayment of workers. This in turn led to the growth of labour organisations in Kochi and Travancore (before they merged as part of Kerala).
The first major protest for fair wages was taken out by boat workers of Cochin port in 1928. Three years later, the Cochin Labour Union was formed. In this period, TM Abu would rise as a major union leader, bringing together the port workers against the chappa. Abu described in his later writing of the incidents how the chappa system worked, how the workers would gather around the Mooppan and beg for work: "Mooppan, dear mooppan, please grant me a chappa! In the name of God! In the name of Allah! It has been three days since we ate."
But, Justin writes, the Mooppan remained unmoved by the pleas, favouring a few who would have bribed him the night before, and throwing the rest of the chappa coins amidst the others. The next big protest came in 1938 when port workers demanded labour rights for minimum wage and reduced work time among others (they worked 14 hours or more a day). "Participated by thousands of port workers, the May Day rally of 1938 attracted port and boat workers of Cochin to the trade union activities," Justin writes.
In 1945-46, the Cochin Port Cargo Labour Union, affiliated to the Communist Party of India, was formed in the aftermath of the Second World War. In Thuramukham, the film, the union is called PCLU and Indrajith Sukumaran played one of the main leaders: Santo Gopalan, a real life character after whom a library is named in Fort Kochi. Brothers played by Nivin and Arjun sway to opposite sides of the employer-employee standoff. Nivin, the wayward son, tags along with the ruthless stevedore (Sudev Nair) and Arjun, inspired by Santo, follows the labourers’ fight. It is also shown how other unions were formed during the same time, but they ended up siding with the employers when it came to labour rights.
Santo Gopalan memorial libary and reading room in Fort Kochi (earlier photo)
The labour rights the workers demanded included the ban of the chappa system and the implementation of decasualisation as stated in the Dock Workers (Regulation of Employment) Act passed by free India in 1948. Decasualisation would mean permanent employees in place of casual workers, which would also end the daily recruitment system using chappa.
This is in line with the story documented in the book Adayalam, written by journalist Abdulla Mattancherry, to record the events that led to the Mattancherry firing of 1953. Other than PCLU, another major union of the time was the Cochin Thuramukha Thozhilali Union (CTTU). In 1950, when the Communist Party was banned in different parts of the country, the PCLU too was temporarily disbanded. As the Communist leaders went into hiding, the disbanded PCLU members joined the CTTU. During this time, the union replaced the Mooppans, but the system remained unfair, with the chappa now distributed by the union.
When the ban on the CPI was revoked in 1952 and the leaders returned, they began demanding decasualisation once again, seeking an end to the chappa system.
By January 1953, one more trade union was formed with the support of a few Congress party members, called the Cochin Port Thozhilali Union (CPTU). Leaders of all three unions formed a joint action committee and gave a notice (to the employers) demanding the implementation of decasualisation. When the employers rejected this demand, the workers, led by the unions, began the chappa samaram (Chappa strike) on July 1, 1953.
The protest went on peacefully for days, with the likes of PJ Antony — a renowned actor and cultural figure — joining the workers and singing songs. "Kaattalanmar naadu bharicha naatil / Theemazha peythappol / Pattalathe pullai karuthiya / Mattancherry marakkamo?" went one famous song, which roughly translates to, "Could you forget Mattancherry, which did not fear the army, when a rain of fire fell, in a land ruled by savages."
Cover of Abdulla Mattancherry's book Adayalam
Within a week of the strike, the workers and their families hardly had anything to eat at home, but they held on. On the 74th day of the strike, they refused to work on a ship under the chappa system. On the same day, leaders of the strike from the different parties — MK Raghavan, AA Kochunni Master, KH Sulaiman, GS Dhara Singh, and TM Abu — were called for a meeting with the port administrator MS Venkitaraman. The employers refused to accept the demand for decasualisation and instead, proposed to hand over the chappa system to unions.
TM Abu objected, even as other union leaders began accepting the proposal. Abu rushed to the windows to shout down to the workers below that they were being cheated. He was arrested, and the other union leaders too were later taken in. The arrest prompted the workers to protest loudly on the streets. The next day, the Mattancherry firing happened.
In the film, three men die in the shooting of 1953, just as it happened in real life. Only the names differ.
Abdulla Mattancherry writes the stories of the men who died: Syed, Saithali, and Antony. That noon, Syed was eating the rice his mother had served when he heard the sound of guns and screams and rushed to the protest site without washing his hands. When he died, there was in his right hand, a stone and the remains of the rice he had for lunch. The protestors used stones as weapons to fight the police firing.
Saithali was throwing stones at police from the old post office when he was gunned down, and he died by the verandah of the building. In Anthony’s case, Abdulla writes that the death happened afterward. Anthony had just brought fish home from the beach when he heard about the protest and rushed to Bazaar road. By then the police firing was over and TM Abu (one of the leaders of the protest) was arrested and taken away. Anthony went to the police station, where he was subjected to hours of custodial torture. Released in a really bad shape, he died days later.
In Justin’s paper, all three men were shot down during the firing.
According to Abdulla's book, the police torture of the workers continued even after the day of the firing. Those they suspected to be Communists were taken into custody and beaten up. In the case filed by the Mattancherry police, almost 100 persons were charged as accused. Among them were all those who sought treatment at the Fort Kochi hospital after the firing.
A special court was constituted for the trial. The judge was Sivarama Menon and the public prosecutor was one mister Kurup. A noted advocate of the time, KT Thomas, appeared for the accused labourers. Three of the accused were sentenced to two years of imprisonment each. However, it was appealed against at the sessions court, and everyone was acquitted.
Kerala, as a state, had not yet formed at the time, but Travancore and Kochi had been merged together as Thiru-Kochi. The Congress was in power and AJ John was the Chief Minister. On the eighth day after the Mattancherry firing, the government collapsed when the Tamil Nadu Congress withdrew its support.
The news of the firing spread everywhere. Workers held protests in other parts of the state and the country. Expressions of solidarity were extended even from workers in European countries.
The workers continued their strike asking for decasualisation for nine years after the Mattancherry firing. It was in 1962 that they finally won the fight. That is when the Cochin Dock Labour Board came into existence.
Huge as it was, the Mattancherry firing was little written about in the decades that followed. Gopan says that his father's play used to be part of the syllabus for students of theatre until the early 1990s, after which it disappeared. But it is expected to make a comeback soon. According to Justin, newspapers and popular narratives often referred to the "labour militancy as the reason for the arrested industrial development in Kochi", and that led to the incident being little mentioned in the history of contemporary India.